{"id":40191,"date":"2018-12-14T18:44:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T02:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=40191"},"modified":"2018-12-14T18:54:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T02:54:47","slug":"suddenly-my-puppy-is-an-old-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/14\/suddenly-my-puppy-is-an-old-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"Suddenly my puppy is an old lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Twelve and a half years ago, she came to me as a feisty, temperamental nine-month-old foster dog who’d already nipped a child’s face and soon earned herself a muzzle by trying to do the same to Furrydoc.<\/p>\n

Today she went under anesthesia for a tooth cleaning. Furrydoc needed four tries to find a vein that didn’t collapse (thus the multiple bandages), and through all that, my sweet and very changed girl didn’t even flinch, let alone attempt to take a bite out of the vet.<\/p>\n

I love the old ones. <\/p>\n

But oh my.<\/p>\n

She needed three teeth pulled. And the blood profile I requested revealed that my old girl is in early-stage kidney failure. <\/p>\n

Ava’s breath has recently become cosmically bad. This week The Wandering Monk noticed it from four feet away and four feet above her head. I hoped her halitosis was just from icky teeth, but since she’d had a cleaning a little over a year ago and her breath was so truly horrific, I suspected worse. <\/p>\n

However, she wasn’t showing any other signs<\/a> pointing to kidney failure.<\/p>\n

I’ll know more after Furrydoc has the result of a urinalysis. But even though she says this can be managed with special food and that chronic (as opposed to more drastic acute) kidney failure is common in elderly female dogs, I heard the unspoken words “beginning of the end.”<\/p>\n

On the bright side, Ava’s home and happy. And my dear, dear friend Furrydoc made this much easier by covering a very significant portion of today’s care as her Christmas present to me. <\/p>\n

And Ava came home with a squeaky stuffed lamb and a bag of dental chews as her presents — with a caution that she won’t be ready for those chews until three empty tooth sockets heal up a bit.<\/p>\n

My poor sweet OLD girl, though …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twelve and a half years ago, she came to me as a feisty, temperamental nine-month-old foster dog who’d already nipped a child’s face and soon earned herself a muzzle by trying to do the same to Furrydoc. Today she went under anesthesia for a tooth cleaning. Furrydoc needed four tries to find a vein that didn’t collapse (thus the multiple bandages), and through all that, my sweet and very changed girl didn’t even flinch, let alone attempt to take a bite out of the vet. I love the old ones. But oh my. She needed three teeth pulled. And the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingSuddenly my puppy is an old lady<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dogs-and-cats","category-health-and-science","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40191"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40197,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40191\/revisions\/40197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}